Seven years. That’s how long it’s been since there has been a new Mayhem album. Seven…Years. But I have to say that it was worth the wait, because Esoteric Warfare is a really good album and a worthy addition to their legacy. Obviously, this isn’t the Mayhem that we know from De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas […]

Wow. 2014 is shaping up to be a banner year for technical death metal. You’ve got Unique Leader’s killer 2014 releases (Soreption, Beneath, Near Death Experience as well as upcoming Pillory and Inanimate Existence records) Willowtip chipping in with Abysmal Torment Cultivate the Apostate, Italy’s reliable masters Hour of Penance withRegicide, respectable US efforts from Rivers of Nihil, […]

Cynic’s polarising shift away from their technical death metal roots has created enormous debate since they reunited with the largely successful but divisive Traced In Air in 2008. The trio of Paul Masdival, Sean Malone and Sean Reinhert made their new found intentions very clear with the increased experimentation, strong melodic sensibilities and progressive bent […]

Although they started back in 2000 as a black/death act with nods to early Opeth (hence the band name), now France’s Benighted is a filthy, ultra-groovy and much different beast altogether. Most of their albums, including 2011’s excellent (and, for me, list-topping) Asylum Cave, are like being flung around inside a brutal death/grind bounce house packed with […]

Season of Mist is proud to announce the signing of the sci-fi focused technical death metal masters WORMED. Fresh off the heels of 2013’s critically-acclaimed album ‘Exodromos’, the Madrid-based band is currently writing for their first Season of Mist full length. One of the most respected bands in the international death metal underground, WORMED has […]

After some demos and EP of fairly standard Swedish death metal, Necrophobic morphed into a black/death act and released a handful of pretty revered albums in 1993’s The Nocturnal Silence, 1997’s Darkside and 1999’s The Third Antichrist. However, it’s 2002’s Bloodhymns that I will always have a soft spot for, being one of my very […]

After really thinking about what I wanted to say about this record, I began to question whether reviewing a release this high-profile truly mattered. Please let me know if you’ve never heard of Gorguts, and are just reading this review because you are interested in who they are and what they do. Contact me too […]

Kylesa are, along with such other psychedelic sludgy metal counterparts as Mastodon, Baroness, Black Tusk and Zoroaster are part of the Georgian scene, which at this rate could at some point go down as legendary as the early ’80s Bay Area thrash or the late ’80s Floridian death metal scene. Like their contemporaries Mastodon and […]

Norway has never been short of black metal bands. I read somewhere a few years back that, according to some study, almost 2% of the country’s entire population belongs to a black metal band. Whether that’s actually true remains to be officially verified, though it’d be cool if it was. In any event, Tsjuder remains […]

It’s been a relatively quite three years since Germany’s Imperium Dekadenz released their solid though unspectacular Procella Vadens LP. After unleashing two impressive albums (…und die Welt ward kalt und leer and Dämmerung der Szenarien), Imperium Dekadenz seemed to take a step back with their aforementioned 2010 release. However, with their latest album Meadows of […]

I’ll be honest, the French (Canadian) spelling of the word ‘nuclear’ is about as threatening as George W. Bush’s ‘nucular’. Also, when you title your album Unrelenting Fucking Hatred, that sets all kinds of warning signs that this is not going to be particularly original. However, given that this project was started by Lord Worm […]

Human beings have been obsessed with the ideal of beauty ever since scientific philosophers first tried figuring out when aliens first touched down on little ol’ Earth. In the early days of modern science, many scientists tried—but failed—to come up with a wheel that could naturally spin for all eternity on its own without the […]

Two years ago, Ghost Brigade painted the wall behind me red with a shotgun blast that was Isolation Songs; it blew my mind. Just like having the back of your head wide open, the album, with its perfect combination of dread and melody, shimmered light into the genre that had long been somewhat stagnant. It […]

I love the idea that there’s such a thing as “traditional black metal”. I like the idea that tortuous tritone riffing, compulsive blast beating and hell-rasping-reports from various levels of Hell can now be wrapped in such a cuddly honorific as “traditional”. I mean, “traditional” is a word I associate with folk music, with things […]

Right-wing yahoos in this country may still hold the French in contempt, but those of us in the underground know better. Not only has France been dominating horror the past few years with brutal films like Inside, Martyrs and the work of Alexandre Aja, but it’s also got its share of stylish, unfuckwithable metal acts. […]

This has to be a late April’s Fools right? Or some sick practical joke and somewhere Trey Azagthoth and David Vincent are laughing it up, and will let us in on the joke, then release a proper album, right? Because if not, I’m going to be pissed, as are lots of other death metal fans. […]

Well, it sure is big. And some metal people, you know, they like big ones. And Greeks, well, it almost goes without saying. They have this entire history of bigness. And now they have The Great Mass. Even though Septicflesh have been giving us really good big ones for a while, with 2008’s Communion flirting with great, they’re sometimes even […]

It seems so easy. Take some folk, mix it with some metal, add some tribal-this, some ethno-that, heat until fused and ta-da!–awesomeness. But as Finntroll, Korpiklaani, Moonsorrow or even the relatively rougher Eluveitie prove in endless genre-mix soufflés, things usually collapse under the weight of whimsy, uneven beauty/beasting, or heavy-pretense (yes, I’m thinking of the new Agalloch‘s tendency to meander, or Swan‘s pointlessly […]

Ironic that the cover of Kylesa’s new disc is so monochromatic, given all of the color the band has just added to its sound. The past’s last album, Static Tensions (only a year ago), was a tight blend of terse, punchy hardcore and grumbling sludge; with Spiral Shadow, the band has embraced a whole new […]

The first time I heard Otargos was their blackened death metal waltz “Hexameron” that apropos of nothing turns into this stripper-friendly fuck-me groove featuring what sounds like a sampled philosophy lecture. Okay, fine. Maybe you’re just cooler than me. Maybe you’ve already been into and tired of the whole blackened death-metal, stripper-friendly, fuck-me groove/philosophy-lecture craze. […]

What was formerly Count Nosferatu Kommando is now The Cosa Nostra Klub, as The CNK have reinvented themselves from industrial/symphonic black to a more martial, pompous brand of electro and metal. Based on the 1930’s goth-military uniforms and the propaganda cover art, I’m already hooked. Perhaps this will deliver what similarly-themed offerings – like Marilyn […]

By now, incorporating Middle-Eastern accents into metal is not the most original of ideas. Nile and Melechesh have both been doing it for several years now, and new bands keep popping up doing something similar. Now we have Arkan, a French band with Middle Eastern roots trying their hand at it within the context of […]

I wanted this album to be bad, so I could redouble the album’s badness with some bad one-liners referencing the album, i.e. “I can find the space for this…in the garbage,” or better yet, “Cynic are the kings of those who know…how to suck.” You get the gist; I wanted to use their song titles […]

Atrox has reminded me of one of the central tenets of my existence on this album, specifically the one about murdering anyone who thinks techno and metal are a good combination. This is very clean industrial-nu-metal without a hint of malice to it anywhere, even the Planet of the Apes sample. The drumming is the […]

For most bands, releasing a double disc studio album comprised of solely new material, and clocking in at an hour and a half, would be an amazing feat. But for England’s extreme doom gods, Esoteric, this is just another day in the park. In fact, it’s not the first time they’ve released a two disc […]